On May 9th students at several UC campuses, joined by community members, will initiate a hunger strike. They will demand that the UC Regents sever ties with the Los Alamos and Livermore nuclear weapons labs. This blog will chronicle their campaign.

Friday, May 11, 2007

[Abolition 2000 is the largest global network of nuclear disarmament organizations - more information is available at www.abolition2000.org.]

MESSAGE TO THE UC HUNGER STRIKERS – MAY 11, 2007

The Abolition 2000 caucus, gathered in Vienna, Austria for the first Preparatory Committee meeting of the States Parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for the 2010 NPT Review Conference, sends our greetings, solidarity and support to the hunger strikers at University of California campuses. For the past two weeks, NGO (non-governmental organization) representatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Belarus, Switzerland, Ireland, Canada, Greece, Costa Rica and other countries have been calling on the governments gathered here to make good on their obligation under Article VI of the NPT to negotiate in good faith the total elimination of nuclear weapons, and we are cautiously encouraged by some of the results. (See today’s press release, attached.)

We were excited to learn of your hunger strike, and publicized it to the government delegates and NGOs attending the PrepCom through an article published in the daily NGO newsletter, “News in Review” (see http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/NIR2007/Day9.pdf). The large youth delegation from BANg (Ban All Nuclear Weapons generation) pledged to spread the news of your hunger strike through their European network.

We wholeheartedly support your demand that the University of California Regents stop providing a fig leaf of academic respectability to the creation of the world’s most toxic and deadly weapons, and instead use their position of political leverage to spur the United States toward genuine nuclear disarmament, in conformity with its obligation under Article VI of the NPT, as well as democratization and demilitarization.